So back in November Essence ran an article titled “Date Like a White Girl.” Long story short -after Melanie Sims’ boyfriend cheated on her, she decided dating like a white girl, meaning that she was going to be “footloose and free.” According to Sims, when Black women date like every man is a potential husband. Instead of looking for Mr. Right she starting settling for Mr. Right Now.
Now when I first read this I was on the defensive, thinking, we don’t date like that! But, yeah some of us do. Shoo, I do did. I originally wrote this post in November and have been sitting on forever. If we wanna keep it really real, I looked at basically every guy I like as a potential husband and that put pressure on everything. I could go on tangent here and talk about all the external pressure we get to get married – especially since the media is making it out to seem like we have a better chance of flying on a unicorn over a rainbow than getting married, but I’ll save that for another day. This is about the pressure we put on ourselves. I wasn’t sure if I could separate these guys I was dating from the larger goal. Poor guys, never had a chance.
This year I decided to do things differently. After crashing and burning with two guys, I had to keep it really real with myself and admit I was doing it all wrong. I had to consciously (and constantly) check myself with the next one. So I did. I went on a few dates without expectations – full disclosure: this might be because I wasn’t absolutely crazy about him. I actually impressed myself, kept it really light, just let it be and enjoyed the moment. For once, dating was actually fun. But now for the best part, it didn’t work out and I was fine with that. It wasn’t a big deal, and that felt awesome.
So what say you SASSY ladies? Do you currently date like a white girl? Are you willing to give it a shot?
peace,
e.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
All for it!
I guess the issue I had, and still have with that article in Essence is the overall call for black women to be more like white women. I think the point of women looking for this or that in men while dating could have been made without yet another call for black women to be everything but black… and for that particular dating style (if we can call it that) to be categorized as a black trait is interesting too.
Seems like, if race is going to be the factor in dating style, the underlying issue there would be the problem that many black women have with black men dating white women. So, “if they don’t want to date us because we’re black, perhaps they would be more attracted to us if we acted like we were white”? I don’t get it.
“we have a better chance of flying on a unicorn over a rainbow than getting married” Despite the sad truth of this message that we’re being bombarded with, LOL at your choice of words. It really tickled me.
Can’t say that I do that now, but I would definitely be willing to try. Last summer I started a game of MANGO (man BINGO) among my friends. It made everything more light hearted and I definitely see the benefit of that. Summa’s a-coming! Time to break out the MANGO board!
Simply put, scrutinizing every minute detail when dating someone makes the process unnecessarily stressful. Needless to say, the greater the number of criteria, the fewer the number of “hits” you’re going to get. It’s not to say you shouldn’t have standards, but you should keep an open mind and enjoy the present.
I see Barbara’s point, but I don’t think the idea is that black women should morph into white women to be accepted, but that the average white woman seems to be more open minded (in terms of dating) than the average black woman…and I think on average our black men are more open minded than we are too in this regard, which is why it makes perfect sense to see more inter-racial relationships involving white women and black men. In my opinion, people are too multi-dimensional for us to reduce them to a list of PERCEIVED qualities.
I don’t know how I even ended up on this post, but I have two things to say:
1. Eva is FINE.
2. I think women should definitely take dating as more of an opportunity to simply enjoy life, I know I do. Although I generally date the same women, I don’t expect marriage out of any of them (given I don’t want to even be in a committed relationship right now), I just enjoy the time we’re together.